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Roman Fedorovich von Ungern-Sternberg (Russian: Рома́н Фёдорович фон У́нгерн-Ште́рнберг ; Mongolian: ᠪᠠᠷᠠᠨ ᠤᠩᠭᠧᠷᠨ ᠹᠣᠨ ᠱᠲ᠋ᠧᠷᠨᠪᠧᠺᠭ), is the autocratic ruler of Mongolia and regent to the 9th Jebtsundamba Khutuktu. A Baltic German, he served as an anti-Bolshevik general during the Russian Civil War and was able to secure a personal Central Asian fiefdom for himself in Mongolia and Tuva.

Ungern-Sternberg is widely renowned as the "Bloody Baron" due to atrocities committed during the civil war and his arbitrary rule as regent of Mongolia. Under his rule, Mongolia maintains close relations to the Russian Republic, but nonetheless Ungern-Sternberg is despised by most of his former White Army colleagues due to his inflated egocentrism, erratic behaviour and the violent excesses he is responsible for.

Biography[]

Early Life[]

Ungern-Sternberg was born as Nikolai Robert Maximilian Freiherr von Ungern-Sternberg in Graz, Austria-Hungary, to to a Baltic German family. Raised in at his stepfather's family estate in Jerwakant south of Reval, then part of the Russian Baltic governorates, the young Roman was infamous among other kids of his age for being a ferocious, sadistic bully who would torture animals for fun and view himself as a superior human being due to his noble Baltic German ancestry.

Ungern-Sternberg had extreme pride in his ancient, aristocratic family and later wrote that his family had over the centuries "never taken orders from the working classes" and it was outrageous that "dirty workers who've never had any servants of their own, but still think they can command" should have any say in the ruling of the vast Russian Empire. Ungern-Sternberg, although proud of his German origin, identified himself very strongly with the Russian Empire. From an early age, he was fascinated by the various "cavalry people" of the Russian Empire, among them Cossacks, Tatars, Mongols and various Central Asian peoples.

From 1900 to 1905, when he was expelled for bad behaviour, Ungern-Sternberg attended the Nicholas I Gymnasium in Reval. After that, he joined the military and fought in the Russo-Japanese War, although it is unclear whether he participated in operations against the Japanese or if all military operations had ceased before his arrival in Manchuria, although he was awarded the Russo-Japanese War Medal in 1913.

Radicalization and Military Career in Siberia[]

Around the same time, the Revolution of 1905 broke out, plunging Russia into chaos. In the Baltics, Estonian peasants went on a bloody jacquerie against the Baltic-German nobility, which owned most of the land there. Aristocrats were lynched and their estates burned down, one being the one at Jerwakant where Ungern-Sternberg had grown up; The destruction of the Jerwakant estate was a huge trauma to Ungern-Sternberg; It would be one of the main reasons for his fervent hate for the Bolsheviks and his equally gruesome violent excesses during the Russian Civil War over a decade later.

In 1906, Ungern-Sternberg enrolled at Pavlovsk Military School in St. Petersburg, and actually studied his course material with interest. During the same period, Ungern-Sternberg had become obsessed with the occult and was especially interested in Tibetan Buddhism. One of his counsins called Ungern-Sternberg "one of the most metaphysically and occultly gifted men I have ever met" and believed that the baron was a clairvoyant, who could read the minds of the people around him.

After graduating, he served as an officer in eastern Siberia, where he spent much time with the various nomadic peoples he had always adored, such as the Mongols and Buryats. Ungern had specifically asked to be stationed with a Cossack regiment in Asia, as he wanted to learn more about Asian culture, a request that was granted. Ungern-Sternberg soon distinguished himself as an an excellent horseman, who earned the respect of the steppe nomads because of his skill at riding and fighting from a horse and for being equally adept at using both a gun and his sword.

However, Ungern-Sternberg was also notorious for his heavy drinking and exceptionally cantankerous moods. In one such brawl, his face was scarred when the officer that he fought struck him with his sword, leaving him with a distinctive facial scar. It has been claimed that the sword blow that caused the scar also caused brain damage that was the root of his insanity.

In 1913, at his request, he was transferred to Outer Mongolia to assist the Mongols in their struggle for independence from China, which was suffering from the effects of the Xinhai Revolution at the time, but Russian officials prevented him from fighting on the side of Mongolian troops. He arrived in the town of Khovd in western Mongolia, where he served as an out-of-staff officer in the Cossack guard detachment at the Russian consulate.

Weltkrieg[]

During the Weltkrieg, von Ungern-Sternberg fought in Galicia and Poland. By his peers, he was considered a very brave, but a somewhat reckless and mentally unstable officer, with no fear of death and seemed most happy leading cavalry charges or being in the thick of combat. He was decorated with several military awards, but was eventually discharged from one of his command positions and imprisoned for attacking another officer and a hall porter during a drunken rage in October 1916.

After his release from prison in January 1917, Ungern was transferred to the Caucasian theatre of the conflict, where Russia was fighting against the Ottoman Empire. The February Revolution, which broke out a mere month later, was an extremely bitter blow to the monarchist Ungern-Sternberg, who saw the revolution as the beginning of the end of Russia, as it had ended the rule of the House of Romanov. While in the Caucasus, Ungern-Sternberg first met Cossack Captain Grigory Semyonov, who would later become one of most well-known Russian anticommunist warlords in Siberia.

In April 1917, near Urmia, Persia, Ungern, together with Semyonov, started to organise a volunteer military unit of local Assyrian Christians. The Ottoman government had waged the Assyrian Genocide in an attempt to exterminate the Assyrian minority, which led to thousands of Assyrians fleeing to the Russian lines. Ungern and Semyonov conceived of a scheme under which the two would organise and lead Assyrian troops to serve as an example for the Russian army, which was being demoralised by the revolutionary mood. Under his command, his Assyrians went on to score some minor victories over the Turks, but their total contribution to Russia's war effort was limited. Afterwards, the Assyrian scheme led Semyonov to the idea of placing Buryat troops in Siberia. The Kerensky government gave its approval to Semyonov's plans, and Ungern-Sternberg soon headed east to join his comrade in trying to raise a Buryat regiment.

Russian Civil War in the Far East[]

After the Bolshevik-led October Revolution in late 1917, Semyonov and Ungern-Sternberg declared their allegiance to the Romanovs and vowed to fight the revolutionaries to the blood. They established their base of operations in Transbaikal near the Manchurian border and literally cleansed the region of Bolshevik influence. The Far Eastern Railway was under their firm control and Ungern-Sternberg soon distinguished himself by extreme cruelty to the local population and to his own subordinates, where he first earned the nickname "Bloody Baron".

However, Semyonov and Ungern-Sternberg, though fervently anti-Bolshevik, were not part of the White movement and declined to recognize the authority of Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak, the nominal leader of the Whites; They refused to work together with the White leadership, as it was "supplanted by Republican sympathizers", something that was not acceptable for the two convinced monarchists. Instead, they acted independently and were supported by the Empire of Japan with arms and money. For the White leaders, most prominently Kolchak and Anton Denikin, who believed in "Russia strong and indivisible", this was high treason.

Ungern-Sternberg’s army comprised a mixture of Russian troops, the Transbaikal Cossack Host, and Buryat tribesmen; They plundered the Whites' supply trains as often as those of the Reds or of private merchants. Since Admiral Kolchak had his base of operations in central Siberia, and Semyonov and Ungern-Sternberg operated to the east of Kolchak in Transbaikal, their attacks on supply trains travelling west from Vladivostok on the Trans-Siberian Railroad did much to hinder Kolchak's operations in the Urals.

Because of his successful military operations along the railway, Ungern-Sternberg received the rank of major-general. Semyonov entrusted him with forming military units to battle Bolshevik forces, among them the volunteer Asiatic Cavalry Division. Ungern established his headquarters at Dauria, creating a kind of fortress from which his troops launched attacks on Red forces. Under his rule, Dauria became a well-known "torture centre" filled with the bones of dozens of Ungern's victims, who were executed because of accusations of being Bolsheviks or thieves.

Involvement in Chinese affairs[]

Around the same time, he established contacts with the Fengtian Clique in Manchuria under Zhang Zuolin, the "Old Marshal", and began to meddle in Chinese monarchist circles, which were firmly entrenched in the Chinese Northeast. In July 1919, Ungern-Sternberg married the Manchurian princess Ji in an Orthodox ceremony in Harbin. The princess was given the name Elena Pavlovna. She and Ungern communicated in English, their only common language. The marriage had a political aim, as Ji was a princess and a relative of General Zhang Kuiwu, the commander of Chinese troops at the western end of the Chinese-Manchurian Railway and the governor of Hailar. In general, most relations Ungern-Sternberg and Semyonov established with the Chinese were based on pure pragmatism and opportunism and only had the aim to secure their own position in the Russian-Chinese borderlands.

This, however, would change soon after. In late 1919, taking advantage of the weakness of Russia's infighting governments, the Chinese government, dominated by members of the Anhui Clique at the time, sent troops under General Xu Shuzheng to occupy Mongolia and bring it back under control of the government in Beijing. This however violated the terms of the tripartite Russian-Mongolian-Chinese agreement concluded in 1915 that secured the autonomy of Outer Mongolia and did not allow the presence of Chinese troops except for small numbers of consular guards. However, after the fall of the Anhui Clique against the Zhili and Fengtian Cliques, Chinese soldiers in Mongolia found themselves effectively cut off from the rest of China and began to plunder and kill.

Ungern-Sternberg, still fascinated by Mongol culture, was severely enraged when the learned of said incidents in Outer Mongolia and decided to take action.

Restoration of independence of Outer Mongolia[]

In 1920, Ungern-Sternberg decided to split from Semyonov, seeing no reason in continuing the guerilla war in Siberian no man's land, and instead focused his efforts on saving Mongolia from Chinese encroachment. The Anhui Clique was already gone by that point and the Beijing government was tied up with crippling factionalism of opposing military cliques; At the invitation of the displaced Bogd Khan, the former ruler of Mongolia until the begin of the Chinese occupation, Ungern-Sternberg's troops entered Mongolia in October 1920.

He moved westwards to the Mongolian capital of Urga, where he entered into negotiations with Chinese occupying forces. All of his demands, including the disarmament of the Chinese troops, were rejected, however. Therefore, Ungern-Sternberg's troops began to assault the city several times throughout October and November, but suffered disastrous losses, forcing them eventually to retreat to Northeastern Mongolia, where he was supported by local khans.

Ungern's troops began moving from their camp to Urga once again on 31 January 1920. This time, the Chinese fronts collapsed very fast, after less than a week. Upon reaching the city gates, Ungern had his men smash their way in by blasting the gates with explosives and improvised battering rams. After breaking in, a general slaughter set in, as both sides fought with sabres. During the battle Ungern's special detachment of Tibetans, Mongols, Buryats, and Russians rescued the Bogd Khan from house arrest and transported him through the Bogd Uul to Manjushri Monastery. Chinese troops, civilian administrators and military commanders fled northwards and massacred any Mongolian civilians they encountered along the road from Urga to the Russian border.

After the battle, Ungern's troops began plundering Chinese stores and killing Russian Jews who were living in Urga. Ungern-Sternberg soon set up a secret police bureau and began to hunt down suspected Bolshevik and Chinese sympathizers. He would also slowly continue to expand his influence in the region, expelling one Chinese fortification in the wide steppes after the other. Soon, Outer Mongolia was completely freed from Chinese influence.

Regent of Mongolia[]

In late February 1921, a solemn ceremony, attended by Ungern-Sternberg and Mongolian nobles, took place to restore the Bogd Khan to his divine throne. One day later, Ungern was offered the high hereditary title darkhan khoshoi chin wang in the degree of khan, and other privileges. Other officers, lamas and princes who had participated in these events also received high titles and awards. For seizing Urga, Ungern was visited by his old friend Semyonov, receiving the rank of lieutenant-general.

On 22 February 1921, Mongolia was proclaimed an independent monarchy. Supreme power over Mongolia belonged to the Bogd Khan, or the 8th Bogd Gegen Jebtsundamba Khutuktu. Ungern was the first to institute order in Urga by imposing street cleaning and sanitation, promoting religious life and tolerance in the capital and attempting to reform the economy. From this point on, Ungern-Sternberg did not interfere in Mongolian internal political affairs anymore and assisted Mongols only in some issues according to orders of the Bogd Khan. Russian colonists, on the other hand, still suffered cruelties from Ungern's secret police bureau; Torture and executions remained a common sight.

WIP

  • Dependence on Japan & Fengtian!!!!


In 1925, Ungern-Sternberg led Mongolia to aid Zhang Zuolin of the Fengtian Clique against the Guominjun army, leading to Guominjun forces being pushed back, and in 1926, Mongolian forces moved into Guominjun-held Inner Mongolia and captured it. Later on, in 1927, Ungern-Sternberg broke ties with the Japan as he seized parts of Inner Mongolia from the Fengtian Clique. In 1928, Sternberg moved his forces south again, fighting against the Shanxi Clique for their holdings in Inner Mongolia. In the 1930s, Ungern-Sternberg began funding rebel Mongol groups in Xinjiang to destabilize their government.

When the 9th Jebtsundamba Khutuktu was found in Tibet and installed in Mongolia as khaan in 1933, some Buddhists began to question Ungern-Sternberg’s rule, and desired to reduce Ungern-Sternberg’s power and install a Buddhist monk as regent until the 9th Jebtsundamba Khutuktu is of age to take power. Many people in Mongolia also wish to go back to the Mongolia of 1911, with a far more democratic approach, and free from China. Both the Zhili and Fengtian Cliques want to eventually reclaim Mongolia, still calling it part of China, however, both fear that this would lead to a war between them, a war in which neither is prepared for. For now, Mongolia remains balanced.









See also[]

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